LESS than six months since Molycop workers walked off the job at Waratah for the last time, the company has dealt staff another blow.
The Newcastle Herald understands staff are bracing for close to 20 job cuts, along with reduced hours for remaining grinding media crews from September.
Molycop announced in September last year that it would cease steel-making operations at Waratah, leaving 250 workers at the site without jobs.
Australian Workers' Union (AWU) NSW branch secretary Tony Callinan said the union was told energy prices and cheaper imported products are what is "really hurting the business".
"From an AWU perspective, further job redundancies on the back of the last lot gives us genuine concerns," he said.
"I said last time that unless something changed it would not be the last job losses we would see in the manufacturing industry."
The Newcastle Herald contacted Molycop about the job cuts. Molycop declined to comment.
Mr Callinan said the majority of cuts look to be in the grinding media and heat treatment departments.
"Their orders have reduced because of imported products," he said.
"They're having trouble competing with imported products and they can't secure an affordable gas supply contract."
Mr Callinan said the decision to cut jobs has left workers facing an "uncertain future".
"We'll be doing everything we can to assist them into other industries like we did in the previous round, but it won't be easy for them," he said.
The Waratah plant makes grinding balls for the mining industry to grind down ores and railway wheels still supplied under the Comsteel brand.
It's the country's only railway wheel manufacturer and has a strong presence in the domestic market, making about 40,000 wheel and axle sets a year in 2018.
The AWU has previously made submissions to the Anti-Dumping Commission, which investigates claims that dumped and subsidised imports have injured Australian industry.
Dumping generally occurs when a company exports a product into the country at a lower price than Australian manufacturers charge.
Mr Callinan said the issue has been ongoing for about the last decade.
"It's not a new problem, this has been coming down the line a long time," he said.
"And unless we get some affordable, reliable base load power, affordable gas and long-term supply contracts, the manufacturing industry is in all sorts of trouble."
February marked the nail in the coffin for Newcastle's 'steel city' identity, as the curtain fell on more than 100 years of steel-making at Waratah.
Formerly known as the Commonwealth Steel Company, or 'Comsteel', Molycop celebrated a centenary of steel-making in Newcastle about five years ago.
The company has passed through the hands of some of the largest names in national and international manufacturing, from BHP to Kerry Packer's Australian National Industries, to Smorgon Steel, One-Steel and now the Moly-Cop Group.
The site opened in Waratah in 1918 with 140 employees, by 1939 the workforce had grown to 600 - reaching more than 3,200 at the height of war production.
In the last 100 years the company has employed and trained more than 20,000 men and women.
Generations of local families have walked through the gates and for many, it provided security in uncertain times.
During the depression era, the business moved to part-time operation to hold the workforce together until they could be employed again full-time.
